Guild Wars 2

I used the search function and was kind of bluffed that it found no results, thus i’d like to mention this:

Guild Wars 2 is heavily drawcall dependant (Just go into the PvP lobby and test your FPS with character limit set to highest and then to lowest, i have an i7 4771 and a GTX780 and on highest settings i have maybe 15fps max and on lowest always about 60), which means that your CPU is holding back your GPU.

DirectX12 offers reportedly 600 000 drawcalls per frame, unlike DirectX9, which is currently being used, that can only render about 6 000 drawcalls per frame, without dropping FPS in the sub 20 area. The main, or even most important, difference between DirectX9 and DirectX12 is that DX12 will support true mulit-core rendering so all CPU cores will be used to render things, YET DX12 will most likely be only available on Windows 10, although one should keep in mind that all users of Windows 7 and Windows 8/.1 will get a free Windows 10 license, if they update within a year.

So yes, i know that ANet wants the game to be playable for a large audience, but considering that DX12 offers nearly 400% performance increase in CPU dependant situations in comparison to DX9/11 one should think about rewriting the renderer. All DX11 supporting GPUs from nVidia will, reportedly, be DX12 compatible and all AMD >6XXX Series GPUs, afaik, too.

TL;DR:

Pros DX12:
-!Ridiculous! performance increase and no more CPU Bottleneck (no more 10fps in WvW Zergs!)
-Future Proof

Cons DX12:
-Less compatibility than DX9, smaller audience (probably Windows 10 exclusive)
-Renderer(/Engine) rewrite

I am really sorry if someone else already mentioned all of this, but i used the search function and found no results!

Whats your opinion on this topic?

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

It doesn’t matter. Again, gw2 is intended to a larger audience than just the Windows 10 crowd.

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

It doesn’t matter. Again, gw2 is intended to a larger audience than just the Windows 10 crowd.

I am saying. whatever anet chooses. We will not see the fruition until a long time later.

We still have a roadblock for Mac Apple. They might not implement opengl next. I am bit more optimistic because tim cook is in charged.

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

It doesn’t matter. Again, gw2 is intended to a larger audience than just the Windows 10 crowd.

I am saying. whatever anet chooses. We will not see the fruition until a long time later.

We still have a roadblock for Mac Apple. They might not implement opengl next. I am bit more optimistic because tim cook is in charged.

You’re right. And that’s why IMO, Anet should focus on better things than DirectX 12.

I support the idea of Dx12, but also Dx11 which seems to be more acceptable for the audience. I’m not even sure about Dx12 GPU’s price range in the future, my Tahiti LE may will be able to handle it hopefully.

More drawcalls and optimalization can bring us better environment with smoother gameplay, but to be honest, making it good and beliveable is more likely about the design itself, not technical limits. We can’t expect much improvement when they can’t make a proper level design for their so called “Living, breathing world!” apart from good frames per sec.

With an i5 3570K & HD7870BE I have nasty bottlenecks.

Also, GW2’s graphics weren’t the best when it came out, it’s just made with style of art that you like or not – some parallax occlusion would be very welcome from my part.

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

It doesn’t matter. Again, gw2 is intended to a larger audience than just the Windows 10 crowd.

it doesnt matter, because for example nvidia gpus back to gtx 500 or something will get a driver update and support dx 12 on a software level. its still wont be as strong as a gtx 970/980 because both will support dx 12 on a hardware level. but still, its a major increase in performance.

even wow has a 64 bit client and supports dx 11 so far.

and even if your computer is too old to support dx 12, they can make it so you could still run gw2 with dx 9.

NoTrigger.8396:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

It doesn’t matter. Again, gw2 is intended to a larger audience than just the Windows 10 crowd.

it doesnt matter, because for example nvidia gpus back to gtx 500 or something will get a driver update and support dx 12 on a software level. its still wont be as strong as a gtx 970/980 because both will support dx 12 on a hardware level. but still, its a major increase in performance.

even wow has a 64 bit client and supports dx 11 so far.

and even if your computer is too old to support dx 12, they can make it so you could still run gw2 with dx 9.

Thats the thing i would propose to ANet..

DICE managed to implement the Mantle renderer afterwards too and its an option in the settings now

If somebody now says that if DX12 was available ANet would put in way too many details for DX9 (older pcs) to render: Watch WoodenPotatoes video on the Heart of Thorns event. He says that even though the game ran on workstation (higher tier) pcs the game didnt run always above 60fps. Considering GW2 doesnt use Crysis 3 grade textures this really is a bummer. If ANet would implement DX12 most likely EVERY zone that under DX9 dipped under 60fps would run always above 60fps…

and to be honest.. GW1 survived survived 7 years with DX9, but it simply won’t be the case with GW2.. (using DX9 in ~2019… urr.. really..? DX9c would be 15 years old by then…)

Yunjii Sun.3512:

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end..

No, it’s BuyToPlay… I, and everyone else, had to pay to download GW2… or pay to keep playing after the free trial weekends were over. There’s just no PayToPlay as I’m sure that’s what you meant.

DirectX 12 could help WvW a lot.
Also have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9UACXikdR0

Sooner or later they will implement it. They stated already that they struggled with performance during a wyvern boss in HoT so they had to go around the problem by creating new textures;

“Too many heavily detailed fire-area effects will cause frame rate performance to drop to unacceptable levels because of overdraw. Overdraw refers to the number of particles on the screen in a given area. The more particles, the more overdraw, and the more performance and frame rate become an issue. To make realistic fire, you may want lots of particles for flames, fire licks, smoke, heat distortion, and scrolling flame geometry. We knew early on that we wanted the wyvern to breathe believable fire. To keep our particle and geometry counts down so that performance remained high, we developed several new fire material types.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-wyvern-in-guildwars2-heartofthorns/

DX9 holding em back, i can imagine the lol fps once we get HoT in hands.

It would be great for Guild Wars 2 and the problem about very low frame rate is solved.

Star Swarm comparison videos by Anandtech:
Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 DirectX 11:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTuhf0aHB4g

Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 DirectX 12:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUsRhZJzsqg

Source:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm

This is done when guild wars 2 was released.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268.html

The test has shown that guild wars 2 is CPU intensive, I am not sure how much this has changed since 2 years ago with all the enhancement patches and supposedly performance improvements patches.

If anet didn’t even bother to update it to support directx 10, I don’t think you suppose to see directx12 too.

It would be a win-win for everyone from increased performance, bug fixes, less stress for servers, and new tricks the programmers could to do with the DX api. Only Anet knows what’s the wide range of hardware everyone is using since they collect data on everything about the game. Even people with low end systems will have to upgrade at some point and why kitten the rest of us when the benefits out weigh the cost of small amount of players too upgrade.

GW2 really needs to get DX12 and VULKAN

VULKAN will come to LINUX and LUNUX is free. Getting new GPU for 60$ soemthing like R7 250 2Gb or 100$ R7 250X/260X shouldnt be a problem for those who paid 30$ for this game.

So playing game can run more different APIs.

Ismet.6157:

NoTrigger.8396:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

loseridoit.2756:

Yunjii Sun.3512:

I’d rather see the game using the latest OpenGL so at least everybody including MAC users who also bought the game could finally get some good performances.

Don’t forget that the game is FreeToPlay, so a smaller audience means less money for ArenaNet at the end.

And btw, the better way to end the 10FPS in WvW zergs is to redesign WvW so it would be less about zerking. Yes, it is easier to say than to do, but if you think about it, once you’ll get rid of the GPU/CPU bottlenet, you’ll have the next bottleneck: networking. And neither DirectX nor OpenGL will save you with that.

opengl next has not been release. in fact, it is being shown on march 5

http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/glnext-the-future-of-high-performance-graphics-presented-by-valve

Neither is DirectX 12 :p

And by the way, they are quite equivalent anyway if you believe John Carmack’s words.

direct x 12 will probably be release when windows 10 is out. I believe microsoft been working on it longer than the khoronos group.

It doesn’t matter. Again, gw2 is intended to a larger audience than just the Windows 10 crowd.

it doesnt matter, because for example nvidia gpus back to gtx 500 or something will get a driver update and support dx 12 on a software level. its still wont be as strong as a gtx 970/980 because both will support dx 12 on a hardware level. but still, its a major increase in performance.

even wow has a 64 bit client and supports dx 11 so far.

and even if your computer is too old to support dx 12, they can make it so you could still run gw2 with dx 9.

Thats the thing i would propose to ANet..

DICE managed to implement the Mantle renderer afterwards too and its an option in the settings now

If somebody now says that if DX12 was available ANet would put in way too many details for DX9 (older pcs) to render: Watch WoodenPotatoes video on the Heart of Thorns event. He says that even though the game ran on workstation (higher tier) pcs the game didnt run always above 60fps. Considering GW2 doesnt use Crysis 3 grade textures this really is a bummer. If ANet would implement DX12 most likely EVERY zone that under DX9 dipped under 60fps would run always above 60fps…

and to be honest.. GW1 survived survived 7 years with DX9, but it simply won’t be the case with GW2.. (using DX9 in ~2019… urr.. really..? DX9c would be 15 years old by then…)

DICE sells their Frostbite game engine. Their engine is competing with UE4, id Tech 4, CryEngine 3, etc. for 3rd party licensing fees. So adding a new graphics API to Battlefield 4 is also adding a feature to their game engine product. GW2’s engine isn’t marketed. There is no “bonus” income stream for making it an awesome FPS engine.

Also GW1 was a Dx8 game. Until Microsoft drops Dx9 backwards support, there is no immediate incentive to spend the resources modifying the engine to add better multicore scaling which is required to see significant improvement with either Dx11 or 12.

I want a 64bit client with actual multicore support. It’s about time we stopped supporting legacy technologies. Would be great to stop using direct x 9 already, it’s not even really about the performance increases, it’s an ancient technology that will have been upgraded 3 (THREE) times by the time dx12 shows up this year. Windows XP shouldn’t be supported by the game industry anymore either as it’s also been upgraded 4 times by win10…

ANet had been dabbling with DX11 some time before GW2 was released, there was still the option to select DX11 in the first or even second open beta weekend.
But alas they had no one experienced enough with DX11 resulting in a lot of issues with the result of it being cut. There is more to it but I wont go into more details here.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-what-are-your-opinions-on-dx12vulkanmantle/#entry5215019

found something interesting. The graphic driver engineering effort is worse than I thought. 1 million of lines per api…..

64 bit client multicore client would be good. 32 bit can only use 2 as far as i know which is 50% load on my system. Also more pressure on ram and gpu less on the cpu.
One thing you could do is optimise the game for physx.
If you add dx12 then please make backwards compability.

The difference between 64 bit and 32 bit is how much memory can be addressed and loaded at once. 32 bit still can use all your cores.

That’s why ArenaNet (Guild Wars 2) wrote a post on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151048222709209
7 Aug 2012

For those of you who have been asking about DX11 support for Guild Wars 2, our goal with GW2 has always been to provide a gorgeous fantasy world while at the same time running on a wide range of gaming PCs.

Focusing on DX9 allows us to do this, as it’s a much wider supported graphics API than DX11 is and we wanted our game to reach as many of our fans as possible.

We will be evaluating supporting DX11 post launch. ~RB2 (Rubi)

I was always interested DirectX 11 for this game but the hope is gone. The performance during Zerg is incredibly worse etc…

The last section from Facebook was never happened during the time.

Now… DirectX 12… we really need this.

MegumiAzusa.2918:

The difference between 64 bit and 32 bit is how much memory can be addressed and loaded at once. 32 bit still can use all your cores.

I know but occasionally im stuck on 20-30 fps with 40% cpu load in world bosses and wvw and that is the bottleneck. Basicly i have a monster of a gpu which does nothing.

MordekaiZeyo.7318:

That’s why ArenaNet (Guild Wars 2) wrote a post on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151048222709209
7 Aug 2012

---

For those of you who have been asking about DX11 support for Guild Wars 2, our goal with GW2 has always been to provide a gorgeous fantasy world while at the same time running on a wide range of gaming PCs.

Focusing on DX9 allows us to do this, as it’s a much wider supported graphics API than DX11 is and we wanted our game to reach as many of our fans as possible.

We will be evaluating supporting DX11 post launch. ~RB2 (Rubi)

---

I was always interested DirectX 11 for this game but the hope is gone. The performance during Zerg is incredibly worse etc…

The last section from Facebook was never happened during the time.

Now… DirectX 12… we really need this.

That one is just PR, sorry.

i think it is a good topic

i would love to hear sth about it from our ANet tech guys, it will be just some huge update for WvW, it will be playable so much more, and i think also theres is some benefits to a server side

Some of us still run GTX285s though, which puts DX11 out of reach.

I think it’s time to upgrade. It’s just… 512b ftw!

Tbh i cannot take anyone serious who still playing on a potato pc. Anyone that is interesed in games has at least medium-range pc

Pc parts are really cheap nowdays and something like r9 260x is more than enough for most mmo games (if not all).

Dx9 has to go. Its dead, rip. Move along.The same goes to Win XP/Vista.

ANSWER: NO.
REASON: China.

If you Microsoft fanboys can sponsor millions of PC upgrades so that people (most of Asia, India & Africa) who run a perfectly fine OS like WinXP get to “enjoy” the latest Micro$oft cash cow OS, THEN you will get to see GW2 in your latest and greatest “approved by Bill Gate´s bank account” gfx API.

adding support to new api doesnt mean u are removing dx9 completely
anyway, it will still take some time before dx12 or vulkan come into existence

even though anet can first adapt mantle but mantle is proprietary and apparently amd is working with khronos to develop vulkan (next gen opengl) which is based on mantle

either way, i think most players are just asking anet to optimize the game to use more graphic processing power than cpu.

Ismet.6157:

-Less compatibility than DX9, smaller audience (probably Windows 10 exclusive)

I will leave this here.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/02/02/windows-10-automatic-install/
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2825116/free-at-last-after-windows-10-consumers-wont-pay-for-updates-or-upgrades.html

Lévis.5489:

Ismet.6157:

-Less compatibility than DX9, smaller audience (probably Windows 10 exclusive)

I will leave this here.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/02/02/windows-10-automatic-install/
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2825116/free-at-last-after-windows-10-consumers-wont-pay-for-updates-or-upgrades.html

Not everybody plays on a Windows PC.

SkyShroud.2865:

adding support to new api doesnt mean u are removing dx9 completely

In praxis it usually does though.

And again Mico$oft can bait however much they want, but especially after the Snowden leaks people (especially outside of the US) have simply become fed up with the constant backdoor burglarizing by M$ and other software houses.

If anything then I´m voting for a Linux API, but from what I hear the AMD marketing talk is again mightier than the reality.